You Can Try, Witch
Midair, Beast whirled her heavy tail and torqued her body, pushing off the pillar with her back paws, launching herself out and to the side. In a movement worthy of a kung fu special effects movie, she spat out the ring and whipped her body around, catching the snake behind the head. She bit down. Metal and bone crunched, green blood splattered and filled her mouth. Beast whipped her whole body side to side, lashing the snake, thrashing its head against the floor, breaking its spine in a dozen places. Death tremors twitched through its long tail. The emerald slit pupil in the single green eye widened and went still.
The woad ring had gone dull and grayish. The stink of burned hair disappeared. The snake was dead.
Just to be certain, Beast ripped out the snake’s vertebra and spat bone, green blood, and silver scales to the floor. She settled to the cave floor to groom herself. Her tongue was rough and coarse, and pulling green blood and blue woad off her pelt.
Oookaaay. I can’t complain.
Beast is best hunter.
Yes, you are. But we’re still left with my hand all bent back and broken. And what is with that stink of burning hair?
We can shift now. We can become Beast. The Gray Between is ours again, she thought.
I studied the ceiling. The dark mote was still there, but instead of a strong pulsing, it was fluttering, as if Beast’s rough treatment of the woad ring and removal of the chain had damaged it somehow. I remembered it spurting, as if it was alive and had been injured. I pushed to our feet and moved slowly to the other side of the fire pit, to see the mote from that side. There was a small blackened mark there, like a scar.
I went back and pawed the ring. Part of it was missing. What happened to the blue ring?
Beast ate it.
Was that wise?
Tasted of blood of Anzu. Beast chuckled. Makes Beast strong.
I didn’t like the idea of her swallowing the magic of another creature, but it was a bit late to argue about it. What about the smell of Bethany? Bethany was a vamp priestess and she took the term nutcase to new and whacky heights.
Bethany meant to watch, like ambush hunter. Bethany has not done so.
So she, what? Forgot about us?
Beast does not know.
But . . . her magic. Is it dead?
Beast looked away, bored with the topic. Or she didn’t know the answer and wouldn’t let me know that she didn’t know. Dang cat. How about the burning hair? I asked again.
Jane has hair.
Yeah. Dang cat was messing with me. Fine. Ducky. Let’s try this thing.
I padded back to the fire pit and lay down on the cool stone floor. Closing my eyes, I searched out, not my own DNA, but the vision of myself in my human form. I felt the Gray Between as it erupted out of my breastbone, high, near my throat, and spread around me with cool, sparkling radiance I could feel, even sightless. The shift began with my spine and ribs, bones cracking, snapping in two, and reforming. I opened my mouth to scream, but had no breath for one, my lungs half collapsed as they changed and reshaped. This change was as painful as my shifts used to be, and as slow, a ripping, tearing transformation. I opened my eyes as the bones in my left hand and arm, and even higher in my shoulder, began to reform, reshape, realign, and snapped into place. Human. Better, I murmured to Beast. Much better.
And then I remembered one of the Tsalagi words for the double helix of genetic material. The snake. I-na-du. The snake in the heart of each creature. And I had to wonder whose DNA Beast had just broken. Or healed.
* * *
I came to in the sweat house, the coals burned low, into deep red heat, the rocks discharging the same heat outward. The first thing I noticed was that I was pain free. Salt-caked. Stinking. I rolled my body over and took a good long look at my hand. Human. Mine. I checked out my feet and knees and thighs, and peeked down through the neck opening of the sweat-soaked gown. Human. Thank God.
My BFF was gone. Aggie was sitting against the far wall, her back ramrod straight and pressed firmly to the wood, as far from me as she could get and still be inside the sweat house with me. I cleared my throat, which felt like two pieces of chamois buffing together. I was seriously dehydrated, and when I spoke, my voice was coarse and gritty. “So. Now you know my deepest darkest secrets.”
“I doubt that.” She sounded wry, not terrified.
“Well, all the ones that are fit to be aired in public.”
She made a sound that was part snort, part a sound like pshaw, and all Cherokee.
I remembered my grandmother making that sound and I smiled, or what passed for a smile made by lips dried in mummified wrinkles. With all the formality at my disposal and with my heart in my throat, I said, “Thank you, Aggie One Feather—Egini Agayvlge i—of the ani waya, Wolf Clan of the Eastern Cherokee, Elder of the Tsalagi.”
“You are welcome in my sweat house and in my home, Dalonige i digadoli, of the ani gilogi, Panther Clan, through your father and grandmother, but also of the ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan, through your mother, who must also be honored.” She gave me a slow, low bow, as ceremonial and ancient in its formality as anything I remembered from my toddler years among the Tsalagi. The kind of bow offered to an honored guest who might come to trade or bring news from a distant clan. As formal and measured as a bow offered to one who brought news of war.
Pushing up to a full sitting position, I managed a much less graceful bow in return, but did succeed in dropping my head lower than hers had gone. As was proper to an Elder and to a shaman of The People.
She gave me a wisp of a smile in return. “Let’s get you showered and inside the house. You need to eat and sleep and drink a great deal of water.”
* * *
Before we left, I ate enough at Aggie’s table to feed three people and drank so much water there, and on the way home, that running trips to the bathroom woke me several times, which was the only thing that kept me from sleeping away the rest of the day. Not even the squeals of running children, giggles, and Alex’s teenaged irritation at the noise and interruptions had any effect. On some level, I must have heard it all, but I slept through everything, and woke at sunset, the last rays of scarlet light brightening the street outside my window. My hand was normal, my Beast was purring contentedly inside me, and I was pain free, if stiff as a board. I couldn’t ask much more of living than that.
However, I shuffled to the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror over the sink. I decided that the myth of zombies was really true, as the black-eyed, sallow-skinned, dull-haired, uncoordinated thing in the mirror didn’t lie.
In the shower, I turned the water to scald and slid to the floor, letting the hot water beat down on me, washing away the last of the salty scum I had missed in Aggie’s outdoor shower, the new stink of sleep sweat, and some of the muzzy-headedness. When there was no more hot water, I crawled from the shower, dried off, combed my wet hair, dried and braided it, and dressed, remembering the clothes that had been piled at Aggie’s sweat house fire. Pretty sure they had contributed to the stink of burning herbs and roots and other scents. Being Enforcer was hard on a girl’s wardrobe. Good thing I wasn’t a fashion horse, a woman who loved clothes and shopping and all that stuff. My lifestyle would have left me in permanent misery.
I dressed in a loose oversized gray tee and black leggings, and pulled on socks, because my feet were unaccountably cold, before leaving the bedroom for the kitchen and whatever animal protein I smelled cooking there. I passed Molly, who said, “We need to talk and scan you for external magics as soon you can be coherent. Which, at the moment, looks like never, but I’m withholding judgment.”
With a grunt, I lifted a hand in her direction as I slid into a kitchen chair. Eli was lining up a plate full of beef shish kebabs, with pineapple and onion and three kinds of peppers, heavy on the beef, which was cooked rare and bloody and perfect. I sat and breathed out, “If you weren’t already adopted, I’d adopt you right now, just for this.”
“That’s what all the old women say. The young ones want to bump bones.”
“Uncle Eli, what’s bump bones?” Angie Baby asked from the living room.
“Crap,” he whispered.
That woke me up. I stuffed a huge gobbet of beef into my mouth to keep my laughter hidden from my godchild. Eli swatted me with his dishrag, smacking my head without even aiming. “These are shish kebabs, Angie.” He indicated a platter on the edge of the table as she walked up. “And when you remove them from the stick, and they bounce, that’s bumping bones.”
I nearly choked trying to swallow the beef half-chewed and not laugh at the same time.
“Uncle Eli,” Molly said from the living room, censure and glee in her tone.
“Sorry,” he said. “Best I could do on short notice. I’ll do better next time.”
“I suggest there be no next time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That would clearly be the best decision on my part.”
“Mmmm,” Molly said. “Come back here, Angie.”
“I’m bored. I wanna watch a movie on the big screen.”
“I wan’ watch moo!” EJ parroted.
“I’ll be working in my room,” Alex muttered, gathering up all his gear and traipsing upstairs.
“So, what are you going to do about the vampire?” Eli asked, trying to divert attention from his own faux pas to me. “You know. The one who wants to live here.”
“What?” Molly asked, whirling to face us again.
I shoved in another hunk of beef and chewed, my eyes promising all sorts of retribution on Eli. He laughed easily, happily—that rare mirth that would have been part of Eli all the time if Uncle Sam and military service hadn’t ripped all the innocence out of him.
Molly shooed Angie to silence and started a Disney movie, listening as Eli explained all about the situation with Edmund and his new, forced position in my life. Things were happening behind her intent expression, thoughts caught in her silence, reflected in her expression before she turned to me. She took a chair beside me and propped her head on her fist, her elbow on the table, red curls flopping over to one side, a little longer than the last visit, but still far shorter than I was accustomed to. “A fanghead primo isn’t a bad idea,” she said.
I nearly suffocated on a half-chewed globule of beef. Eli’s happy smile faded away. I choked the beef back up and said around it as I chewed, “Whatchu mea’?”
“I’ve been studying the Vampira Carta in my spare time,” she said, offhand. “Well, the twins and I have. And Lachish Dutillet.”
Lachish was the head of the New Orleans coven, the woman leading the Witch Conclave, and she was in charge of vamp/witch reconciliation. She was a stout, stern middle-aged woman who looked like someone’s grandmother, but was really a magical force to be reckoned with. The twins, Elizabeth and Boadicea, were two of Mol’s remaining witch sisters and were always in trouble. Or making trouble. Or stirring up trouble. Despite which, I liked them both a lot.
The Vampira Carta and its codicils contained the rule of law for the Mithran vampires and it contained protocols and rules for proper behavior between vampires, scions, blood-servants, blood-slaves, and cattle—the demeaning term for the nonbound humans whom vamps once hunted, sometimes for sport. The Carta provided proper procedures and conventions for everything, including challenging and killing each other in a duel called by lots of names: the Blood Challenge, the Sangre Duello, and the Blood Duel, to name three.
“A Blood Challenge,” Mol said, her eyes squinted, unblinking in thought, “Enforcer-to-Enforcer, or primo-to-primo, for first blood, is a common proper protocol for visiting vamps. It’s one acceptable first step to one master issuing a Blood Challenge to another. But if the first blood challenger loses on the first pass, they usually don’t offer formal challenge to the death.”
A fight to the death, with a sword, was a challenge I was destined to lose, which reminded me of the scar. I reached up under my arm and pressed the flesh there. I felt a ridge of tissue, but it was no longer sore or tender. The healing in the sweat house had given better results than I had expected, short of a true shift to another form.
“Having a primo makes you a master,” Molly said, “while still being Enforcer to Leo. It would put the challenger in a difficult place protocol-wise. A primo or an Enforcer can fight that first battle for any master. Is Edmund any good?”
“Yes,” Eli said. “Better than his position would indicate. He’s a former Blood Master who lost his position to an inferior fanghead, inferior in terms of vampire power, compulsion, and fighting ability. We’ve always thought he gave up the position instead of fighting for it, for reasons that have never made sense to us.”
“Interesting,” Molly said, picking at the pile of pineapple and onion and peppers I wasn’t eating. “One has to wonder why he fell so low, and why he’s still so low. Machinations, maybe? Leo doing what Leo does best?”
“Plans within plans,” I said.
“And this fanghead primo. He has no place to sleep? How about the bolt-hole/safe room you turned into weapons storage?” She was referring to the long narrow room under the stairs, hidden by a bookcase in the living room.
“We secured the entrance from under the house, but I could unsecure it,” Eli said. “I could put a lock on this side of the bookcase opening so he couldn’t get in through there. That would leave the house safe from him. There’s enough room to put a cot there, but no place for his belongings.”
“You are not seriously considering having Edmund stay here,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Big Evan would have a cow.”
“There is that,” Molly agreed. “Evan has cows often.” She pushed away from the table and wandered into the living room, where the kids were watching some animated, improbable movie, where the girls were all wimps, waiting to be saved by a prince.
Angie Baby was telling her little brother what was wrong with that scenario. “The princess would have a sword and lots of magic spells and point her magic wand and the bad man would go ‘poof’ and be gone.” And it made me smile. Angie would never be a wilting violet, waiting to be rescued.
Big Evan was upstairs, arguing with Alex about research. The Kid’s room had become a library filled with things we borrowed from the sub-four storage at HQ. Journals, newspapers, letters, diaries, vamp and human histories that were being scanned and, where possible, automatically added to our ever-growing database. I could smell the Kid’s frustration from here. He wasn’t used to anyone butting in on his methods or trying to change his organization. Currently he was updating info on the Mings, specifically chronicling their vamp connections through the last hundred years, hoping to find a clue on who might have taken Ming of Mearkanis. From the snippets of conversation, Evan wanted him to concentrate on the witch aspect, and right now, not later.
I transferred my attention to Eli and said softly, “Now, why do you think Molly would be so agreeable and then walk off like that?”
Eli chuckled, the sound grim and admiring all at once. “So she can declare innocence when we do this thing. So she can lay the blame cleanly at your feet and Big Evan can get mad at you, and you can find a way to make it work without her being at fault.”
I swiveled my head, watching my BFF scooch onto the couch between her kids. “Dang. Molly’s sneaky. And maybe a genius.”
“Sylvia assures me that all women are geniuses that way. Except you. She says you ‘think like a man and don’t give a good damn who you piss off,’ ’scuse the language. Mostly she’s right.”
I was pretty sure the quote was an insult. “I think like a cat, not a man,” I said, but otherwise she had me to a tee.
Eli’s cell made a burbling sound. He flipped the Kevlar cover open and said, “A text from Edmund Hartley.” He chuckled as he read. “He’s delivered all his unused furniture from his room at headquarters to a storage unit.” Eli glanced up from his cell, “According to Alex, Edmund actually owns the storage unit facility, and he personally has access to ten units. Alex thinks they’re full of stuff left over from being a clan Blood Master. Or weapons of mass destruction. Or dead bodies in fifty-five-gallon drums. Or gold bars. My brother has an imaginative and warped mind.” He went back to the texts. “Edmund is on the way here. He wants to know where to park his vehicle.”
From the street, I heard the high-pitched roar of a four-cylinder car. To a road enthusiast, most four-cylinder vehicles sound like vacuum cleaners, but this one sounded different. Powerful. I stood to look out the window and saw a bronze-poly-toned sports speedster gleaming in the dark and the streetlamps, a car to rival my Harley Bitsa for style, design, and sheer kick-ass-ity. “What is that?” I breathed.
“That,” Alex shouted down the stairs, “is Edmund’s Thunderbird Maserati 150 GT. It’s one of the few 1957 prototypes still in existence.” He smacked down the stairs in his flip-flops and out the side door. The rest of us followed to see him throw open the side gate to the tiny alley between my house and the one next door and rush into the street. “Yes!” He pumped his fist. “That is a one-of-a-kind car called a little rocket because of its incredible power-to-weight ratio. One like it fetched more than three million at auction a few years back.”
“Three mil? I thought Edmund was broke.”
“Methinks Eddie lied,” Eli said.
“Is that Brute in the passenger seat?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Alex shouted over the sound of the engine echoing off the narrow walls as the little rocket eased into the tight alley and into the side yard, between the barbecue grill and the brick wall. “Ed’s bringing Brute. Leo kicked him out of HQ for reasons unknown. I’m guessing the werewolf peed in his shoes or ate his Barcalounger.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” I said. I felt an itch between my shoulder blades, as if someone had a laser scope on me, a high-powered rifle aimed at a kill site. I was breathing too fast, heart beating too fast. Crap, crap, crap. I didn’t like this at all.
Too many people in our den, Beast thought, panting hard. Shift into big-cat and run. We find new den. Alone.
The car went silent and Alex said, “Can I drive your car, dude?”
“No,” Edmund said as he stepped from the Maserati 150 GT. The three-hundred-pound white werewolf leaped from the passenger seat and landed on the ground with a faint grunt as Edmund closed the door. The car door met the body of the car with that distinctive dead sound of the perfectly machined, airtight work of art. Edmund said, “Only my mistress-to-be may drive my car.”
Inside me, Beast stopped panting, her dread stopped in its tracks. Her ears pricked up, her attention moving from the wolf to the two-seater. Hunt cow in car. Fast car. Faster than cow. Faster than stinky dog-wolf. Car has no head. Can leap from car to cow. Want to hunt!
“Edmund,” I said, resisting the lure of the sportster. “You will be keeping Brute with you. You both will be sleeping in the weapons room. There is one bed. There is no room for your clothes or your belongings. And I don’t care, so don’t bitch at me about it. The only entrance to your room, available to you, is under the house.” Edmund’s eyes flared, the white sclera going scarlet, though his pupils stayed almost human small and his fangs didn’t snap down. “Right,” I said, stepping closer until my arm shoved against his. I towered over him. “Understand me, fanghead,” I said, prodding, pushing. “You and the wolf will not be sleeping in the house with my godchildren.”
“Isn’t that racial and species profiling?” Edmund asked, deliberately goading back.
Yeah. He was pushing this. I had to wonder why he was picking now to challenge me, but I didn’t really care. I was suddenly in the mood to hit something, and the vamp was available. I leaned in and sniffed him, picking out the floral reek of the undead and the stink of lies, secrets, and underhanded vamp crap. I blew out, my breath ruffling his hair, letting my anger grow, letting the stink of it fill the backyard. And I started to growl, low in my throat. Molly grabbed both kids and backed away slowly. Eli took Alex by the arm and pulled the teenager away, back to the porch. Molly and Eli were smart. Edmund, not so much. He turned his eyes up to mine, meeting my challenge.
“Vamp profiling? Could be,” I said, showing teeth in a smile that had no humor in it all. “Not that I care. I don’t dislike you, but I don’t want a vamp here. I don’t need a vamp here. I don’t want a primo or an Enforcer or the responsibility to take care of and for another being. I have too many people I have to take care of as it is. I am not adding a fanghead and a werewolf stuck in wolf form to the list of people I have to protect and can’t.”
The backyard went silent.
After the sound of the words died away, I actually heard them.
Beast snorted, Jane is stupid foolish kit.
I saw Eli and Alex on the porch. Eli looked severely ticked off, eyes narrowed, mouth a forbidding line. Alex looked scared. Molly and Evan stood in the open back door and Molly was mad, her eyes spitting sparks. Evan was gathering power, witch power. I heard it in the low hum of the basso note that came from his throat, a note so low it was little more than a vibration, making his red hair and beard stand out around his head in a corona of energies like something Tesla might create. Molly took his hand and her curls lifted, swirling in a breeze that wasn’t there. “Ummm. That’s not quite what I meant,” I said.
“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what you meant and what you believe,” Molly asked. “In some sick little part of your stupid brain, you believe that we come here to be protected. That you are responsible for us all.” She dropped Evan’s hand and strode out of the doorway, pushing past the Youngers, her energies gathering, her anger growing. “I’ll have you know that Evan and I are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves and our children, born and unborn, against all comers. We are capable of taking down Leo and his entire council. Just the two of us. We don’t need you, you stupid cat. We love you and want to help you. Or I did until you said that load of horse hockey.”
I turned away from my friend and looked at the ground. I didn’t know what to say. But Eli did. His anger falling away, he said, “Not horse hockey. Somewhere, deep inside, Jane needs to take care of the people she loves. But her family is growing too fast and it’s creeping her out.”
Molly considered that, the magics sparking into the air easing off. She said, “Because they get murdered or raped or killed or disappear into snowstorms. Or they take off with a cat in heat and leave her alone.” I felt the heat magic dissipating. “Well, da . . . ang. I get all that, big-cat. I do. But we’re a team, not your dependents. Not your parents. Not your kittens. Not your housemothers or the children you protected from bullies at the children’s home growing up.”
I looked up at that one.
“Yeah. We all know about that,” Alex said. “Reach got hold of your records from the home and I . . . kinda shared them. You know. Once we met Misha we sorta kinda knew anyway.”
Misha was an untrained witch whom I had defended from bullies in the Christian children’s home where we both were raised. I closed my eyes. “Oh, crap.”
Molly said, “We’re also not your responsibilities to worry over or provide for. We’re your friends. Your family.”
“Ditto,” Eli said. “And if you need reminding, I can still kick your butt when I have to. Admittedly I have to cheat to do it, but I can.”
“And we can deal with the fanghead and the wolf,” Big Evan said. “If he tries anything, Mol can drain his undead, unlife-force so fast he’ll be true-dead on the floor before he knows what hit him.”
Edmund tilted his head on his neck in one of those birdlike motions they usually try to hide, a gesture that proves they aren’t human anymore. “You can try, witch,” he hissed.
“This. This is why I don’t want you here, Ed,” I said. “I can’t deal with your silly, vamp lack of emotional control.” Good. Direct the attention off me and my big mouth. “And I know you can take care of yourselves,” I said to Molly and Evan. “It doesn’t stop me from feeling responsible for you and your kids and your sisters and every witch in the world, including the sister I had to kill to save you.” And the effect her life and death had on me. Which might include the flower that morphed into a snake head in my soul home. Evangelina’s scent and favorite flower had been a rose. Something to worry over later, when I had finished trying to destroy or save my relationships. I wasn’t sure which I was actually doing.
“And you?” I said to Eli and Alex. “You’re my baby brothers. Get used to being protected. It’s what big sisters do.”
Edmund, who looked human again when I slanted my eyes at him, seemed to be thinking, his gaze holding a faraway stare. Without warning, he dropped to one knee and said, “Jane Yellowrock, Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans, rogue-Mithran hunter, bravest woman I know. I, Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, do hereby swear fealty to you and to yours, to your entire extended and many-peopled and many-creatured family and Yellowrock Clan. To provide, protect, care for, fight for, and to die true-dead as you may need. I place all my needs second to yours and to theirs. I place my hunger second to yours and to theirs. I place all that I am and all that I can be and all that I can do at your disposal, into your hands, for the duration of the next nineteen years. I am yours in life and undeath and in true-death.”
Yellowrock Clan? I opened my mouth to stop this, but he swiveled his body, the knee on the ground at my feet grinding in the grass. “And I swear fealty to the Everharts and Truebloods, for as long as Jane Yellowrock is yours and you are hers, one clan, placing my own well-being beneath your own, and with the promise that I shall protect your children and your children’s children unto the laying down of my own undeath.” He turned back to me. “You no longer must protect me, my mistress. My blood is yours to spill.”
“Holy crap in a bucket,” I said.
Primly he said, “The correct response is ‘I accept your fealty. In return I offer you a place at my side, to share my life and my holding, and the promise of a true-death most glorious.’”
“Good by me,” Eli said, his equanimity dropping into place like a veil over his real emotions. “Say it, Jane. Because if you don’t, then I will for you. As your second and your brother according to the Tsalagi, I have the right to go to war with you.” When I stared at him and then around at the group in my tiny yard, he said, “Say it,” in a tone of command.
Something weird and heated flared up in me, something unexpected. Something that felt like a healing when I hadn’t known I was sick or broken. It roared through my body and out my mouth. “Fine,” I shouted. “I accept! You still sleep in the weapons room with a werewolf!”
“Agreed,” Edmund said. “Accept my service.”
I repeated the words “I accept your fealty,” and a strange frisson of trepidation crawled beneath my skin and through my bones, accepting Edmund’s service in the vampiric way. Fealty. Dang it.
“So witnessed?” Ed asked.
“So witnessed,” Eli and Evan said together.
“Coolio!” Angie said from behind her father’s knees. “So witnessed!”
“Coweoo. Sho eness,” EJ said.
“What just happened?” I asked, fighting tears that made no sense at all.
“You just adopted a vampire and werewolf,” Eli said, “to go along with your brothers and your witches.”
“We need a bigger house,” Alex said.
From the house came the words “You are my dark knight, Vampire Edmund. I will take care of you too.” It was Angie’s voice. At the words, something shifted inside me. Something dark and light, heated and icy. My world shifted on its always precarious axis.
“Angie?” I asked.
“Oh, hell no,” Evan said.